http://www.care2.com/greenliving/consciousness-raising-with-babies.html
Consciousness Raising with Babies
“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.” –Charles Baudelaire From Art in Theory 1815-1900
For anyone who has observed a very young child for any length of time, you quickly realize that babies and toddlers have a markedly different relationship with the world than most adults do. Where as adults often seem purposeful and directed in their actions, with exacting and deliberate outcome in mind, young children are often moving through flowing states of exploration–engaging and routinely disengaging focus as dictated by their whim, unable to delay gratification, and barely possessing the ability to convey complex emotions. All of which often make children appear to be largely unfocused and residing in a state of fluttering consciousness. Parents often see this trait as apparent immaturity, in comparison to their relative crystalline focus and single-mindedness.
A fascinating article by Jonah Lerher outlining new groundbreaking research, which ran in the Boston Globe last month, provides an entirely different picture of what we think we know about baby/toddler consciousness. According to the piece, unlike the adult mind, which restricts itself to a narrow slice of reality (thus allowing us the ability to achieve sustained focus), babies can take in a much wider spectrum of sensation. “They are” as the author states, “more aware of the world than we are.”
Rene Descartes famously argued that the young child was simply bound by sensation and hopelessly trapped in the confusing rush of the here and now, but as evidenced by the research sited in this article, the average baby brain contains more brain cells that the average adult brain. This renders an adult’s attention to function almost like that of a narrow spotlight illuminating very specific parts of reality, whereas with very young children it functions more along the lines of a lantern, illuminating the whole of their surroundings. This is precisely the reason why a child, while not being able to remember the name of a beloved family member, will (without being asked to) remember the color of the walls, the shape of the candy bowl, and the crack in the ceiling of that nameless relatives home. Basically, because children have yet to become to accustomed to all of the rules of the world, as well as the details they are expected to focus upon, they instead opt (by nature) to just take everything in.
Maybe it is just me, but I found the notion of this hyper-aware and open consciousness to be thoroughly intriguing as well as somewhat humbling. It is well known that adults, as high functioning as we can be, quickly loose the ability to experience life as a truly open and unbiased experience. We tend to compartmentalize, prejudge, and look at the world around us with an unyielding subjectivity.
Now, I am not going to resort to cheap romanticism and impracticality by stating that we should try to rewire our minds to perform and process the stimulus of the world like young children do (since we are all far too long gone). However, maybe the simple act of retraining how we observe our children’s interactions with the immediate world around them (now that we know they are firing way more neurons than we could imagine), could help open our minds to the newer side of old experiences.
Eric Steinman is a freelance writer based in Rhinebeck, N.Y. He regularly writes about food, music, art, architecture and culture and is a regular contributor to Bon Appétit among other publications.
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16 comments
add your comment »Having read this interpretation of child behaviour/activity helps remove an old notion that children are less focussed - I should now say that while they take in everything, they are more focussed on what needs to be immediately. This is a great trait which we adults could also benefit from provided we retain this ability as we 'mature' without discarding all else that we come across in the course of our being.
Not ignoring all else around us is likely to make us more conscious of others and their feelings and help us shape our behaviour in a manner not to hurt anyone.
Didn't Shakespeare say ".... Child is the father of the man .... " ?? This has been quoted without any gender bias :).
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grown ups lose touch of the exploration that little children naturally have, by bringing structure and rules into play. to me this creates boredom and a loss of your childlike nature, which is needed to connect with mother earth.
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So Child-Like Curiosity is a GOOD thing! Kind of reminds Me of that saying that "Scientists are People that never really grow up."
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Babies are not tethered to conceptions about the difference between fact and fantasy. For them, everything is possible. They don't have to interpret everything, to run it through a sieve of "reality." We adults would do well to follow their example, no?
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Thank you.
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I think it takes at least a few years of experience out of the womb before a child has the backlog of facts that allows them to compartmentalize. The older we get, the more we store these facts next to those those experiences, put the names to images and remember that we are supposed to remember them. We absorb the rules of behavior and sort: this is good, that is bad.
All these years later, I'm not only still sorting, I still can't remember the name of that relative with the cracked ceiling, either!
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The brains of babies and toddlers that have been neglected or abused are, in many cases, as much as a third smaller than those of happy healthy children and lack complexity, making them look like the brains of Alzheimers sufferers. The importance of hours of loving touch and attention to babies and children each and every day by all their carers cannot be overemphasised!
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Good to know! What we alow our babes to assimilate into their hungry minds in their first 2-3 years pretty much determines where they'll go in life. So we should encourage "mental feeding frenzies" so they become mega-smart and powerful.
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Thank You Eric! I agree with you.
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Thanks Eric!
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